Pacific Air : How Fearless Flyboys, Peerless Aircraft, and Fast Flattops Conquered the Skies in the War with Japan

This is a grand sweeping epic of the fighter air campaign in the Pacific theater during World War II, telling the heart-pounding story of the pilots who turned the tide in the war and the fast-flying, hard-turning, lethal machines whose names have become legendary: Hellcat and Avenger. "Pacific Air" tells the epic and inspiring story of how the harnessing of the heroic skills of a generation of young naval aviators turned the tide in the Pacific during World War II.

With their lethal and elegantly designed aircraft, despite disastrous setbacks and early, humiliatingly overmatched defeats, they challenged and ultimately vanquished a superior Japanese air force and fleet in the wartime Pacific.

The instruments of the aviators' triumphs were the F6F Hellcat, a single-seat fighter aircraft, and the TBF Avenger torpedo-bomber, the heaviest single-engine aircraft of World War II.

With young and superbly trained U.S. Navy and Marine Corps aviators at its controls, the Hellcat became the most successful aerial weapon in naval history: Hellcat pilots were credited with destroying over 5,000 Japanese aircraft. The Avenger, meanwhile, though rugged (pilots dubbed it the "Turkey" and claimed that it flew like a truck, for better or worse), versatile and ultimately as storied, had a more checkered history.

It was not until the Second Battle of the Philippine Sea (Pacific Air's stirring climax) that Avenger pilots finally (aided by a torpedo innovation: a plywood-fabricated, Rube Goldberg gizmo dubbed the "pickle barrel") got their hour of redemption. "Pacific Air" is a majestic portrait of a proud era and its dual perspectives - the inventive minds of young aeronautical engineers and the lethal aerial artistry of even younger combat pilots - brings this important, yet under-appreciated, chapter of World War II vividly to life.